[...] I spoke to Erik Simon, the producer of
Ambermoon, or, as he describes it, "the guy who kicks
the programmers' butts and ensures the game is released on
time", to find out exactly how they tend to claim the
RPG throne for themselves. [...]

[...] "Believe it or not - you better
do, I'm two metres tall - but we have had a bitmap-polygon
routine at Thalion for over two years now. As we've been involved
in various projects we've not had the opportunity to implement
this technique but now the chance has finally arisen. Our
revolutionary realtime texture mapping system gives you the
possibility to move around freely in three-dimensional dungeons
and cities. It really gives you much more of that 'I'm really
there' feeling. It thrills us to be doing things on the 16-bit
machines that are normally impossible to do." This
texture mapping business sounds very interesting, but what's it
all about? "Generally speaking, it's the next step in 3D
games," pipes Erik. "The development has gone
from wireframe to solid polygons and now on to texture mapping.
Texture mapping uses the same simple calculations that most
polygon games use but instead of taking a simple one-colour
polygon, we take a bitmap graphic and distort it spatially so
that it fits on the polygon. Many painting programs such as
DPaint have been doing this sort of thing for years but the real
problem lies with performing it in realtime with dozens of
bitplane polygons. This is quite a task because you have to
handle every single pixel of the object, instead of using a fast
one-colour polygon routine. It's easier to do on the PC than the
Amiga, due to the VGA cards [the byte-per-pixel mode], not to
speak of the faster CPUs."

Speed is always an important part of a 3D game.
No matter how much detail on-screen, if the game trudges along at
one frame a day, the illusion of realism is lost completely. The
Ambermoon dungeon is drawn using four bit-planes, which give
sixteen colours, but the actual game runs in five planes (32
colours). Due to the amount of colours being used Thalion are
losing 25% of the optimum speed but they feel that the advantages
of having more colours to play with and the ability to smoothly
fade objects to black when there is little light in the dungeon
more than make up for this. "The average speed of the
dungeon section is anything between ten to five frames a second,
depending on what's on screen," explains Erik.
"There are special routines for turboboards which speed
things up on upgraded machines. We're constantly working on
optimisation, but I don't think we can make it much faster. If we
have the time then maybe we'll offer an option to display
textures on the floor and ceiling especially for turbo
owners."

An interesting feature of Ambermoon is the way
the view changes depending on which character is currently
"active". The view from a dwarf is noticeably nearer
the ground, making the walls appear far more daunting.

Comparisons are bound to be made between
Ambermoon and Legends of Valour but Erik doesn't seem at all
worried. "Although I've only seen the Amiga demo
version, it failed to impress us here at Thalion, not because of
the frame rate, which, to be fair, isn't that much slower than
ours, but because our screen window is approximately three times
bigger and still faster. We're using the same size screen for the
texture mapped dungeon in Ambermoon as we used for the block
dungeon in Amberstar which is why our system doesn't tend to
'crumble' distant objects as much as Legends of Valour.
Furthermore, we seem to use bigger bitmap blocks so the pixels
don't zoom into larger squares as fast. Don't get me wrong, I
don't want to criticise the Legends team, they've performed, just
like us, pioneering work on the Amiga. With our system, for
example, it's impossible to have a 'second' storey like in
Legends, at least at the moment. Despite these technical details,
you have to bear in mind that our texture mapping system is only
one part of Ambermoon."

There aren't any actual sound effects in
Ambermoon because they've decided to concentrate more on
implementing atmospheric tunes. They are hoping to include
between twenty and thirty musical pieces, composed by Berlin
music student Matthias Steinwachs (who, interestingly enough, was
responsible for the excellent No Second Prize music).

Ideas are constantly floating around, as Erik
explains. "We always have many more ideas than we can
program or paint but are unable to for one reason or another.
It's not a question of the machine's limitations, it's a question
of time and that, of course, means money. We're looking enviously
to America from time to time. These guys put maybe ten times more
manpower and money in their projects because they know that they
will sell enough to be in profit at the end of the day. In fact
Ambermoon is a project with which we are testing to see wether
the Amiga's share is still strong enough to afford the
development of high-standard software."

Erik leaves us with an unbiased (?) passing
comment. "Ambermoon improves over all the other RPGs
because it is the best RPG ever and I want all of you people to
buy huge amounts of it," he jokes. "One of the
main points in the 'Amber-philosophy' is to use both a complete
2D and 3D system. In our opinion it's a very good way to create a
whole fantasy world, instead of having just a complex dungeon
system like many other RPGs. It combines the thrill of exploring
a huge world in 2D without losing orientation, with the intense,
claustrophobic atmosphere of creeping through an eerie, dimly lit
dungeon, especially with this new 3D system. Interior furniture
and architecture that would be too complicated to be
realistically displayed in 3D can be portrayed in 2D instead.
We're trying to offer the player two RPG games in one which would
be able to stand alone as a game each. We feel that we are the
only software house that is capable of doing this because we have
the experience of Amberstar and some new development tools. I
think Ambermoon will be the most advanced RPG available on the
16-bit machines. I really hate arrogant comments like that, but
take a look at the finished game and you'll see."

The One Amiga 53 (Februar 1993)

Way back in February we unveiled Ambermoon to an
astounded Amiga audience who began bombarding us with calls and
questions regarding the game's release. "Easter."
we replied, not knowing the amount of egg would end up on our
faces when the game never materialised. It's not our fault,
honest - blame Erik Simon, Jurie Horneman and Karsten Köper,
three of Ambermoon's design and programming team. They're the
ones to ask.

Seeing as though you don't have their phone
number, we've decided to do the asking for you. So then, Jurie,
just why has Ambermoon taken so long? "After Amberstar
was finished, back in February 1992, the entire team sat down
together and planned what we'd do in Amberstar 2 (as it was
called then)." replies Jurie. "We made a long
list of new features and changes and, after having practically
redesigned the original game, we said to our manager: 'We'll have
it ready by Easter.' And he said: 'Oh, don't hurry - take until
August.' Brilliant, we thought - we've got one and a half years,
so we happily started working on the most amazing RPG ever. Then
the word from above came: 'Er, we thought you meant August 1992,
guys! The game's got to be in the shops by Christmas!' So we sat
down again and thought of smallish changes (like a real-time
texture-mapping dungeon) we could make to the original Amberstar
system so it could be ready by Christmas 1992, and set about
working on what was then called Amberstar 1.5. When we came to
convert Ambermoon from the Atari ST to the Amiga, we found that
it had to be virtually rewritten and not just ported across as
we'd hoped. The combat screen took longer than expected, the
texture-mapped dungeon took longer than expected, changing the
editors took longer than expected... but we discovered neat
things we could do if we just changed a little bit here and
there... Suddenly it was March 1993 and the end of Ambermoon
still wasn't in sight. We sat down and tried to estimate how long
it was going to take, and this time we said: 'Okay, August 1993.
Really. Honestly.' And we will probably make that. Give or take a
month."

Erik chips in here with some swearwords: "It
seems to me that we didn't fully realise what a bloody huge
project we were creating until a few weeks ago when we counted
the data. It was weird discovering that we'd managed to create an
RPG the size of which you usually see on the PC, programmed by
teams five times as large as ours. And on top of that there are
all the nagging journos who keep asking us why Ambermoon has
taken so long." All this programming has certainly been
testing the patience of the Ambermoon team. It must have been a
lot harder to program than they anticipated. "Not
harder, just longer." offers Jurie. "Mastering
the Amiga with its complex operating system and custom hardware
took a lot less time and effort than I expected although some of
my colleagues, who remember my graceful reaction to the
unexplainable bugs caused by incorrect use of the Blitter and
what I did to the office doors and walls, may have a different
opinion. But what do they know? Looking back, few routines were
really hard. However, at the stage where we are now, the programm
contains more code than the Atari ST operating system - and
that's all hand typed. The seperate parts of an RPG are usually
easy to program - it's the sticking it together that's the hard
part."

So how has the game changed over the months? "Every
part of the game has been redesigned as we went along,"
continues Jurie, "because it's usually only during the
actual programming that you can accurately judge what is possible
and what isn't." Has the game turned out pretty much as
Jurie originally planned? "No, it's much, much better.
We originally planned to do a kind of upgraded version of
Amberstar. Now even the game's own mother wouldn't recognise
it." Erik is incredibly confident about Ambermoon's
credentials. "Unless some monster of an RPG creeps out
of a dark cave full of mutated developers, we should be able to
beat all known Amiga RPGs in size, technique (dungeons and
fighting screens), graphics (170 different walls, over 350
dungeon objects, 25 or more fully animated monsters), sound (over
30 tunes, complexity and playing time). And due to Jurie's
efforts to brush up the user interface, it's no crappy marketing
blah-blah when I say that RPG newcomers won't have any problems
getting into the game."

The One (September 1993)

[...]

I spoke to Jurie Horneman, who's
responsible for a lot of Ambermoon, and asked him what
it's all about.
Well, those who played Amberstar will remember the
glowing red moon at the end, on which the evil Tarbos was
imprisoned. The background to this game is that the red
moon crashes onto the planet, destroying most of the
countries. Civilisation has to be rebuilt, and Tarbos
survives in some form, which you'll have to find out. You
don't have to have played the original game to play this
one of course, but those who did will recognise some
references. The other two moons are involved in the
story, too.

How many characters do you
control in the game?
You start off with just one character, who you pick out
of six males and six females. You throw computerized dice
to determine his or her attributes. On the adventure you
can pick up to five more companions to join you.

You talk about the complex
dialogue system in the game. How does it work?
There are two types of characters in the game, one that
just gives you stock responses and the others which
really have something useful and interesting to say. You
can offer them food, gold or objects in exchange for
information and clues. You select words from a word list
that you add to during the game by picking up on other
people's conversation or seeing a word on a statue for
instance.

It seems we're talking about a
pretty big challenge here.
It will take a long time to complete simply because it's
so big. Amberstar had some very tricky puzzles in it, and
took about three months to complete. We've tried to make
the puzzles in this one easier, but it will still take
longer than Amberstar because of its size.

With a wealth of good RPGs coming
out, what does Ambermoon have to offer over all the
others?
The texture mapping adds a lot to the game. Moving and
rotating is so smooth that you really feel like you're
there. You can choose which character's eyes you want to
view the action through, and the eyes of a dwarf for
example are lower than those of an elf. It's all very
realistic.